Chapter Forty-Two #5
“Yeah, this proves Cookson is here. I’m going to ask the loa to help me locate his ass.
” Shelby and her boyfriend were still looking at the shop window as if it was fascinating, so I turned to my shop window, trying to seem as interested.
It was a florist; staring at the flowers and plants made me wonder if sending flowers to Reggie would be too much; yes, it would be too much, but I filed it away for later.
If tomorrow went well, and the date night went well, then maybe flowers.
“Did you hear me?” Charleston asked.
“I’m sorry, sir, no.” I felt incredibly careless.
“The uniforms should be driving by any minute. Bridges and Antero, and the MacGregors are en route to you.”
“The subject is window-shopping with the boyfriend just ahead of me. Street is clear.” I saw movement in the window behind the flowers and realized that Miranda was in the shop.
Dear God, she was going to think I was following her.
I tried to move away, but the look on her face let me know she’d spotted me.
I couldn’t think of what to say as she came out with a wrapped bouquet of cut flowers. She knew exactly what to say. “Do I need a policeman to stop you from following me, or a hotel room so we can cure this sexual tension?”
I said loudly on the phone, “Honey, of course I remembered it was the anniversary of our first date. I wanted it to be a surprise, but that’s why I’m running late.”
“The skin is here, make sure your angels guard your ass until your backup arrives,” Charleston said.
“Of course I remember what your favorite flower is,” I said, but Charleston had already hung up. He had a voodoo ceremony to perform that would hopefully help us locate Cookson.
“Are you off the phone?” Miranda whispered.
I put the phone in my pocket and nodded.
“Wow, almost cheated on your anniversary, you would have been in hot water.”
“She reminded me in time,” I said.
“Do you really remember her favorite flowers?”
“Sunflowers, and if they’re out of season, gerbera daisies in as many colors as I can find them.” I smiled saying it, because they were Reggie’s favorites. I glanced down the street and saw Shelby and her boyfriend still cuddling in front of the window two shops down.
I looked at the mixed bouquet of flowers in Miranda’s arms. “Who are you buying them for?”
“Me,” she said.
I raised eyebrows at that, using the dark glasses to hopefully hide the fact that I was looking at the couple down the street. They’d started to kiss, which was good for me since it kept them stationary.
“Shouldn’t the person who put a ring on your finger be buying them for you?”
“I could say that’s sexist.”
“You could, and if you prefer to buy your own flowers I apologize.”
She smiled, but it left her eyes dull. “No, I don’t prefer to buy my own, but I got tired of hinting years ago, and outright asking got to be humiliating, so now I buy my own.”
“I would say shame on him, but it would sound hypocritical.”
“That you noticed that puts you ahead of most men.”
“Then I’m sorry on behalf of all of us. You deserve better.”
“Doesn’t your wife deserve better?”
“She wanted a separation, not me.”
“You cheated on her?”
“No, she wanted us to date other people.”
“And now she’s calling about anniversaries and wanting you to come back? Looks like dating didn’t go like she thought it would.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, and I was genuinely interested now. There was no threat to Shelby and her guy, and me talking to another woman made it less suspicious when I would have to keep following them on a nearly empty sidewalk.
Miranda gave me a look that made me feel younger, or maybe just na?ve. “Your wife either thought you would be bad at dating and come crawling home, or she had someone in mind to date and it hasn’t worked out.”
I frowned and couldn’t keep up the undercover persona, because what she was saying made sense and I didn’t want it to make sense.
I couldn’t tell her that Reggie wanted the separation because of my job, because I was a pre-law student who didn’t have a job yet.
“That’s not why she wanted the separation. ”
“If you say so, and that look on your face says there is no way you’re thirty.”
Shelby and her boyfriend wrapped themselves around each other and started kissing even more passionately; maybe that’s why she was wearing the neutral lipstick?
Miranda looked at them, too; maybe she’d noticed me looking even through the sunglasses.
“We all start out that way, and then it changes,” she said.
“They seem like they’re in love,” I said.
“They’re standing in front of a jewelry store that’s known for helping college students get nice wedding sets at discount prices, so they think they are,” she said.
The boyfriend got the door of the shop and escorted Shelby inside.
They were still holding hands. I didn’t like that I couldn’t see them anymore, but I didn’t expect her to dive out the back to escape me either.
In fact, it was going to get awkward fast if I didn’t have more people helping me tail them.
Of course, right now I had the perfect reason to follow them. “Maybe I should try for some jewelry instead of flowers, then,” I said.
“Or maybe she should be buying you apology gifts,” Miranda said.
“I don’t believe she owes me anything.”
“Is the flirting the act, or is the vulnerability the lure when the confident flirt fails?”
“You’re lovely, Miranda, and if you were my wife, I’d remember to buy you flowers, but I think I’m going to go with jewelry before I actually do something that I need to apologize for to my own wife.”
“You’re big and boyish and yummy, Havoc.”
I smiled. “And you’re beautiful and insightful, and it would be a pleasure to take you to bed, but . . .”
“But you’re going to go buy jewelry for your wife?”
“I am.”
“If you want to go back to her, then stop flirting so damn well, before someone takes you up on it,” she said, and went up on her tiptoes to touch the side of my face.
I wanted to rub my face into it like a cat scent-marking.
The urge was so strong that I put my hand over hers, trapping it against my skin, so that I wouldn’t follow through on what felt too intimate to do with a stranger.
Miranda took the hand over hers pressing her against my face as the more intimate gesture, which I guess outside my head it was; she was right, I should really stop flirting before something happened that I couldn’t take back.
Miranda let herself collapse against me still on her tiptoes, so that I put my arm around her waist to keep her steady.
The flowers were pressed between us, her other arm around my neck.
The flowers saved us from being pressed completely together, and I was grateful for the space because my body reacted instantly to her in my arms. I couldn’t control the reaction, but I could keep her from feeling it and my gun if I was careful.
She leaned her face upward for a kiss. I couldn’t blame her for expecting one.
I wasn’t going to do it, but then I felt the warmth at my back; my Guardian Angel was trying to get my attention.
There was a brush of invisible wings on my right side, up the sidewalk from where we’d come.
I looked in that direction and saw an early-twenties-aged white male over six feet tall, but shorter than me so under six-three.
Short dark hair, cut and styled in a way that Reggie called movie star leading man trying too hard , paired with dark eyes, probably brown.
All his clothes looked brand-new: solid red T-shirt made out of something satiny or silky, tight blue jeans distressed from the store, very expensive high-top jogging shoes artfully unlaced, so that they were useless for actually running.
He had a watch on his right wrist that looked like Cartier and if it was, then it cost more than everything else he was wearing plus a car.
The man looked at me looking at him and there was a jolt of recognition, as if I not only knew him but I’d seen him in a bad place as a bad guy.
I needed to figure out where I’d seen him before he figured out the reverse on me, so I bent over Miranda and met her offered kiss.
If he’d seen me as a cop, I’d have probably been in a suit surrounded by other cops, not like this with a woman and flowers.
People see what they expect to see most of the time, so I’d be a guy in gym clothes giving his girlfriend flowers and getting a kiss in return.
Miranda melted into the kiss, her arm encircling my waist so only the pressure of our bodies kept the flowers pinned.
Her hand slid inside my tank top, tracing along the bare skin of my back.
The feel of her fingertips tracing along my spine made me shudder in her arms. Which made her dig her nails lightly into my back.
My knees almost buckled, sending me falling into her arms so that she had to brace before I caught myself.
The man passed behind us, and the angel at his back screamed for help. The psychic push of it stabbed through me like a spear. I pulled away from Miranda, but my arms were still on her arms; the flowers fell to the sidewalk as I turned to watch the man walking away from us.